I believe he is not leveling Ukraine because on of 2 reasons or both combined :
1)He hasnt got shit to do it with…
2)He is afraid that once he starts a genocide thats too “in you face” for all the world, NATO will step in.
As i said, i believe its a mix of these 2 reasons.
When Azarbaijan fought Armenia a few years back, they won the whole war with distance controled drones. Azarbaijan is not a country of which you would think they have some amazing tech, but yep.
Technically, what Putin is sending people to do, could be done with the same drones yet we dont see any. Why? I believe that Putin always showed only the best shit he had but it might aswell be the only good shit he had. I mean they put 100 fancy choppers on the line and we think that all 1000 are the same. In reality he might only have 100 good ones and the rest are soviet crap.
The amounts of money Russia always claimed they spend on military might aswell be stolen. In these parts of the world, most money goes to rich people. Like - if i am in charge of buying you a cool chopper that costs 1 million, i will say it costs 10 million, buy you 1, and keep 9 million to myself. Thats how EU money is spent in my country also. We built a bridge that is one of the most expensive bridges in the EU, but its just an average bridge. It was that expensive because of stolen money. They just bought overpriced stuff from their family company, etc.
So basically, I DONT KNOW if it is true, but somewhere in the back of my head i believe that Putin might not have as much cool stuff as he claims.
With these weird regimes there is this problem with leaders actually not knowing what they do have, because people in charge of shit just lie, so they wouldnt get killed. I believe that was the case with North Korea. The fat dude actually thinks they have lots of good stuff and his military shows him how many bombs they have etc, while those bombs are just the outter shell and without the important stuff inside. They are afraid to tell him that all they have are these show-carcasses, because they probably would be shot for doing a shit job. So they just say that everything is cool and fat guy just wants a war with USA because he truly thinks he has all he needs to win.
I’m very pleased to hear that yes. As I stated above, I hoped this would mark a change in Germany’s military funding and how serious we take Defence.
Trump was absolutely right when he criticized your NATO Allie’s for not spending the required amount of GDP on the military. He was not undermining NATO, he was telling us to get our shit together. But hey, we just needed a war in Europe to see that he was right.
From the article:
Germany has been widely criticized for what many describe as meager investment in its military and its slow and lackluster response to Russia’s military buildup around, and subsequent invasion of, Ukraine.
Hopefully we turn this ship around and make our NATO Allie’s proud to stand on our side. I’m also very pleased that despite putins warning we are funding and sending weapons to the Ukrainian people.
Supporting the Ukrainians as much as we can may very well be the only option left besides sending in troops.
I still love this country. But I am not thrill with it’s power structures. I agree they are pathologically ill, and worse, pathologically stupid.
I do. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Personal autonomy, freewill and free speech. As far as material wealth, I believe it’s all a gift. Much of it was built on the shoulders of giants that we are beneficiaries of. But I also believe effort, skill and intelligence gives you some right to property. A place to call home. I do believe we have a right to home.
And are undoubtedly mistaken and misled about the reality of it, also.
Hope is a good thing. I am not sure how realistic that is. Despite all these talking points regarding the Ukrainian resistance, I don’t think they stand a chance. And I don’t believe Putin didn’t plan for contingencies and set backs. I hate how the media is talking up the effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance, how surprisingly “weak” the Russian army is and how suddenly, supposedly, all the sudden Putin has gone psycho. I don’t see him as any more or less psycho than he has always been. This sounds very much like underestimating your opponent. And I don’t buy it. Russia went into this with it’s eye’s wide open, I don’t sense he’s surprised, at all by any of the reaction.
Russia has the full cooperation of the CCP. The CCP is the manufacturing capital of the world and they are all he needs to get around all these sanctions.
I honestly do not know what the right move for the US to make with regards to Ukraine is, right now. Save for one thing.
We can easily stabilize our own energy situation by simply restarting our energy independence. That would bring the peace of mind and the confidence to us and our allies to think clearly amid the crisis and help stabilize, at least to some degree, energy markets around the world. Be biden won’t do it. He nixed that idea immediately. And those are the stupid decisions you get when you are motivated by ego. God forbid he do something sensible, because Trump. He killed it with the stroke of a pen and he can unkill it with the stroke of a pen. But will he? No, absolutely not. So instead of doing something remotely sensible and measured, he put us in greater peril.
He will never pay the price these decisions create, we will. And obviously it hurts the weakest among us the most, but he doesn’t give a shit. He’s gotta cover up his shady Ukrainian deals and preserve his Chinese money. That’s why he’s letting china off the hook so easily.
Perhaps, but do you think in the last 7 years he hasn’t been working his way around that problem? Again, he’s got the CCP and they are all he needs. They got all the cash and the credit he will ever need. All he has to do is support their invasion of Taiwan and that’s all she wrote.
Removing them from SWIFT could also backfire on the US. The CCP has been wanting to do away with the petro-dollar for a while. This may be their chance. And Russia doesn’t need anybody else’s oil, they have plenty of their own. I don’t know if they are playing 4D chess or not, but I can’t believe he would have had any illusions about being cut off from that system when planning this whole thing out. If being cut off from SWIFT was really a huge concern for him, then he wouldn’t have made the moves he did. He had to know that would happen, if he didn’t that would make him incredibly stupid. I’ll give him evil, despotic, even crazy, but I won’t describe him as stupid. Not yet. Maybe he is, but I need to see the evidence.
I can’t see, when Putin was planning this out with all his people, that they did not consider every possibility. I think it’s smarter to assume he did and be wrong, than assume he didn’t and be wrong.
Why not? And China by decrying crypto and semi “banning” it to drive it’s prices down may have been deliberate. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
That’s quite a marxist notion. That ain’t gonna happen. That’s what the hippies thought. I mean, it would be good for people to adopt a bit more humility, but we have to deal with people as they are, not as we wish them to be.
This is the most difficult question of the current situation. Right now, I don’t believe US intervention is the right move. There are many reasons for this, but among them is that we are not ready for war, we have no unity, and our military has been gutted by executive fiat. We are not in the position we need to be to go to war with Russia. We need to get energy independent again right now, immediately. We need to secure our own border as any enemy can just walk the fuck over from Mexico, so we are very vulnerable. And we need to restart our manufacturing base, also immediately.
After those three measures are implemented (at minimum), we are in a much better position to make a sound, rational judgement as to whether or not we need to intervene. Without securing our own situation, I fail to see anything other than a bad outcome should we intervene.
Hell NO. Not at this point, because of the points I just mentioned. We are in too weak a postion to go to war with the likes of Russia… And they know it.
Yup.
We are not safe. It’s possible this war stops with Ukraine and everything goes back to something resembling normal, but it seems more probable this thing will escalate. And if it escalates, we will be drawn in, sooner or later. We are not ready for war with the likes of Russia. We can take on a 3rd world country, but not a Chinese-backed Russian army.
Yeah, I am not buying his explanation. He has a bunch of NATO countries already bordering him.
Though, I think this whole concern about NATO should have at least been tested by the west. Since he threw that our as his bargaining chip, it would have been fairly easy to test if he meant it. We could have at least considered seeing if taking Ukrainian NATO admission was really his concern. If that was really all he wanted, we could have replied with a deal where he doesn’t screw with Ukraine in return for not considering the possibility they might be admitted in the distant future.
My guess is he would come up with something else, or another demand. But we will never know because nobody tried it. And they under estimated his resolve and here we are.
They just have to further escalate. Hit a NATO ally and viola, we’re at war.
And yet, he seems undeterred. I am sure he doesn’t like it, but I don’t think he over looked that detail when planning this out.
Yes… yes they are.
They most certainly can be. Did you see the Afghanistan withdrawal? I have zero faith in anybody in this administration. They are too arrogant, too stupid, too petty and too proud.
I am sure the chinese had a difficult time keeping a strait face during these discussions.
hmmm… I didn’t get that memo. I don’t know if they are good are war or not, but they sure seem well prepared. Underestimate your enemy at your own peril.
Yes. For the plurality, but there is still a shocking large and loud minority who really like authoritarian overreach.
Yes, this administration is in the toilet. They have failed at literally everything they have touched. They have managed to fuck up everything, all of it. Biden has been banging the Russia drum relentlessly because they are desperate for a distraction. Apparently not realizing that this is a no win situation for us. But they desperately want us to “look over there” so we pay less attention to their domestic catastrophes, their illegal trafficking of illegal aliens, the many, many scandals that pop up so fact, the media barely has a chance to cover them up before they get out. Biden wanted this war. That’s why they did as little as possible to stop it. Save for begging the CCP for help. I guess they thought the CCP is on our side, because after all they give a tremendous amount of money to our elite class. And they like basketball and they have a very cozy relationship with Hollywood. I reckon they thought the CCP loved us which is why criticism of the CCP has been pretty much banned in public. Calling Taiwan a sovereign nation can get you banned from social media. They really thought Xi was our friend. Now they are learning the hard way he’s not and never has been.
That’s the reason, poll numbers. Biden is in the toilet. He’s in the toilet despite a very friendly media apparatus that props him up, tells us inflation is transitory, that the massive spikes in crime are our imagination and everything the administration has failed at is actually a good thing and it’s all Trump’s fault really, even though he is not the president and made none of the decisions that put us in this situation.
To fuck everything up as incredibly bad as biden and the democrats have, really takes a talent few posses.
Yup. The one good thing this whole war thing may do, is stop that “new world order” crap at the center of the wokness religion. War is reality and truth, when reality and truth come to collect on the all the lies you have told, it’s seldom merciful and lies cannot last forever.
Appeasement does have a horrible track record of making war more inevitable and more bloody than they originally would have been. But Ukraine itself is of no special interest to the US. The reality is our borders are more sacred than theirs and we are very far from prepared to handle a war of this scale. This won’t be a minimal casualty affair and we are in a position of tremendous weakness. That’s why the prescription of securing our energy, our infrastructure and manufacturing, and our border must be done before engaging a strong enemy. We don’t stand a chance, so long as anybody can mosey across the Rio Grande with impunity. Where do you think our enemies are going to penetrate the interior of this nation? We need to get our house in order and fast, because the probability of escalation is high. But, in joe’s wisdom, energy independence isn’t a high priority, it isn’t a priority at all. He already nixed that idea. That alone makes us too weak for war. If we get cut off from the world, we’re screwed.
But “everybody needs to sacrifice a little”. a.k.a., we the citizens have to bare the brunt of the massive price hikes coming our way, because energy independence was Trump’s idea, therefore bad, by default.
Yup. This is a situation where you cannot afford to make any mistakes if you want to avoid escalation. And he’s making mistakes at every possible turn. So we’re screwed. I am not even sure the nation can recover from the damage he’s done. But he didn’t do it alone, along with other stupid, selfish, self interested politicians, the media has helped a great deal.
For fuck’s sake, CONGRESSMAN Eric Swalwell, was caught sleeping with a Chinese spy, fact-check true. And they still appointed him to the House Intelligence Committee AND the Homeland Security Panel. That is how stupid our politicians are. I ain’t cuttin’ the republicans any slack here either, they let it happen. There is not a fight on Capital Hill they won’t run from. We are so screwed right now… The situation is dire and I don’t know if we can even make it to the 22 elections before shit is irreparably damaged. That is the depth of the stupidity of our ruling elites.
I don’t think we can win any conflict right now, much less with Russia. Our government and media class is a complete, corrupt, clown show. Incompetence and stupidity get people killed. This won’t be a low casualty war when we eventually get dragged in.
It’s going to be messy and I hope the people wake the fuck up before it’s too late.
They thought they could play games with Putin and with Russia. That dragging his name for the last 5 years wouldn’t piss him off and was worth the price, because ‘orange man bad’. Well, now we’re starting to pay the price and we ain’t finished, there are a lot more bill coming due.
Add that to the host of economic issues being blamed on this Ukraine situation, as if all the lies from COVID were not the cause. Who could believe anything?
Yes. Take notice that many Americans are not looking at this from a multifaceted perspective. It is simply “Putin is the new Hitler,” “fight for freedom,” and “democratic values”.
If the information is correct, lunatics and predators in Ukraine are now looting and killing innocent Ukrainians with guns they were provided with by their government.
Do you believe the Ukrainians are bombing their own people and Russia is just letting people think they are responsible? Not judging, I’m trying to understand
And all you have provided so far as evidence for “looting killing innocent civilians with guns provided by their own government” is a picture of a broken glass…which you acknowledge could be frm anyplace anytime.
